Mobius said:
Is there a limit to how many Windows XP Pro machines can be on a LAN?
We have a small office with one such machine that is hooked up to three
printers that we share with four other XP machines over a TCP/IP DHCP
network 'fed' from a ADSL modem-router and switch set-up.
Somebody mentioned that Windows XP allows only a limited number of computers
for file and printer sharing.
We are planning to add more Windows XP Pro machines to this network shortly.
All existing and planned PCs have and will have SP2 installed.
We shall certainly appreciate further information on this.
Regards and TIA.
Mobius
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16,777,216 per network segment if the same NIC manufacturer is used in
each host. This is the limit of the lower 3 bytes of the MAC address
for a host which must be unique for each host within a network segment.
3 bytes = 24 bits. 2^24 = 16777216. If you mix vendors for the NICs,
then the OUI portion of the MAC would be different and you can put even
more hosts on the same network segment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_address
That is a physical limit. Since you will be using Ethernet to connect
them then further limits are established depending on which class of IP
addressing you use. For now and without specifics about your network
setup and its DHCP configuration regarding its IP allocation to hosts,
figure you could have anywhere from 254 to 65K hosts on your network.
If you are asking about using mapped drives to identify networked
resources, well, there are only 26 letters in the alphabetic from which
to assign drive letters. A: and B: are always reserved for floppies.
Figuring you have at least one hard drive, say C:, then you have 23
drive designators left for physical or mapped drives.
Because of the limit of using mapped drives to denote network resources,
use a UNC path to the resource instead (\\hostname\path). See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_(computing)#Uniform_Naming_Convention.
If you are talking about how many connects *to* a host are allowed, and
for Windows XP Professional with is a workstation version of Windows and
NOT a server version, then the limit is 10 concurrent connections. See
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314882. After all, it a workstation,
NOT a server. That only limits the number of *concurrent* connections,
not how many hosts can connect to that host at different times.